Blood Moon – Reddish Moon During a Lunar Eclipse

Just my video of the Red Blood Moon lunar eclipse last April 15, 2014 at 12:00 midnight.

Blood Red Moon

This was shot with a hand held Canon Vixia HFR40, with 53X Zoom (32X Optical Zoom). No tripod so it is a bit unstable.

Also taken in the background supposed to be Mars. If you are looking at this just a few minutes after this was uploaded, the video might still be processing on YouTube so it may be a bit blurry.

What actually makes the moon red is the same reason that makes the sky red during sunset and sunrise, it is explained near the end of this blog post. Since the sun’s rays passes by the earths atmosphere, the sunlight cast on the moon now appears reddish.

Automatic Electronic Configuration in Excel

Automatic Electronic Configuration Excel File
Just enter the atomic number and the electronic configuration appears.

Just another Excel exercise, displaying electronic configuration. All you need to enter is the atomic number (which is also the number of electrons in the atomic state of an element) Nothing really special, just some series of if statements and some text formatting.

Download it here: Electronic Configuration Excel File

January 19, 2020 Update:
I just felt like adding a VLOOKUP table to display the symbol and element name below the atomic number.

Using Microsoft Excel in Solving 2 or 3 Unknown Variables Using Matrices in Row Echelon Form

My daughter was working on some match assignment solving algebraic equations but instead of doing the usual transposition stuff, she was solving it in a matrix setting them up in row Echelon form. Something even I needed to review a bit to refresh my memory how it is done.

She then asked me if Excel can solve this to double check. And I said yes and no. There is no automatic way to show the row Echelon form of the matrix but I can certainly make some way to display it. So challenge accepted.

If you need to review yourself on the row Echelon form, I found this video to be useful.

If you need an MS Excel file that can solve 2 or 3 equations with 2 or 3 unknown variables respectively in matrices using the row Echelon form and needs to see the complete solution, you can try this file I’ve created. If you find this useful, you are free to use an distribute as long as you mention it was made by me, and link back to this page. Enjoy! Download it here: Row-Echelon-Form

 

Math/Logic Problem and Answer

Five employees at the Wild Fowl Publishing Company each come to work by a different one of five means: car, railroad, subway, and walking. They hold these positions at the company: art director, editor, publisher, receptionist, and secretary. Two of them are men named Finch and Marten, while three of them are women named Fulmer, Gannet, and Hawk. From the information given, determine the position held by each person as well as the means by which each one gets to work each day.

  1. Neither of the men walk to work but one is the art director and the other is not the publisher or secretary.
  2. The publisher is named Hawk or Fulmer and none of these takes the railroad or a car.
  3. Mr. Finch does not come by railroad and he is not editor.
  4. The female receptionist is not named Fulmer and neither of these two walks to work.
  5. The secretary does not take the bus to work.

Solution:

Math / Logic Problem

 

  • Mr. Finch is the Art Director and drives a Car.
  • Mr. Marten is the Editor and takes the Railroad.
  • Ms. Fulmer is the Secretary and takes the Subway.
  • Ms. Gannet is the Publisher and Walks to work.
  • Ms. Hawk is the Receptionist and takes the Bus.

Super Moon! May 5, 2012 Photos – View from San Diego, California

Photo 3 of Super Moon taken on May 5, 2012 from San Diego / Escondido, California
Super Moon taken on May 5, 2012 from San Diego / Escondido, California

 

So probably many of you have heard tonight May 5, 2012) is the night when the moon should appear larger and brighter than it normally is. I can definitely see that it is indeed brighter. But seeing the moon to be larger would not be that easy to notice. According to the smart science people (you know astronomers, NASA people, Wikipedia updaters and stuff in news results), the moon will appear 14% larger. C’mon, would you even notice that?

Supermoon May 5, 2012 - The moon is 14% bigger, but can you really notice 14%?
Supermoon May 5, 2012 - The moon is 14% bigger, but can you really notice 14%?

For those that already took a look outside, did you noticed any difference in the appearance of the moon? Were you disappointed if the supermoon didn’t look as super at all? If you look at the image above, 14% increase may be hard to notice in a circle. Read on to find out which one of the circles is larger.

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Magnitude 5.4 Los Angeles California Earthquake

While working on my computer at the 17th floor of a building in Downtown San Diego, I felt the tremors right away and looked outside the window. Since all other buildings were not in close proximity, you cannot see that much the strenght of the sway but my window blind were moving to show that this was undeniably an earthquake in San Diego.

Some group of employees ended up going down the stairs from the 17th floor just to safe just in case there were any after effects. We went to a deli about 3 blocks away and stayed there for a while.

After coming back, I checked the epicenter right away. It was at 33.955 degress North and 117.765 degrees West that registered 5.4 on the Ritcher scale detected by Seismographs from USGS, Caltech, CGS, UCB, UCSD and UNR. The location was about 46 kilimeters away from the LA Civic Center.

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Ants Vs. Spider

I grew up in another country, and where I came from, small spiders are like toys, where kids get their own spiders and use them in spider competitions. The game is simple, just get a barbecue stick and each player holds one end of the stick. Then a spider is placed on each end. Then we let each spider fight each other and who every falls down the stick first, loses. Another game is with beetles where their hard wing shell is folded up and pinched on one end of a slitted barbecue stick and another on the other end facing each other. They are placed in a lined circle area on the ground, preferably on soil and not concrete and it is like a sumo match. With all these games as kids, we sometimes tend to experiment. And we have done moth larvae versus a spiders where the moth larvae won since it has some stinging hairs. I have also got a moth larva and placed it in a path of red ants just to see who will win this battle and I have seen a moth larva lose to the large volume and group effort of red ants. I remember my wife watching this also as I was curious with the battle that was just happening on the gate of our house. And here is one interesting video, but these are not kids having fun. These are American soldiers spending some time having fun with insects and spiders (a spider is not an insect.) Probably to temporarily take out the loneliness of being away from their family and being sane with the insane war. Below is some specie of spider versus from ants. Although the spider won, these ants are not red ants. They are black ants that are not usually equipped with claws on their mouths. Aside from that, ants have the advantage in numbers and a good communication skills to cal for backup. This is a case of a limited number of ants within a plastic bottle and a very big spider. not really that big, but too big enough for the ants. Well I know this is boring. But it is interesting to me. 🙂

Orion Meteor Shower

I heard over the radio that this weekend is the Orion meteor shower. These meteor showers happen once a year and usually are named after the constellation where it occurs. These meteor showers don’t really look like it is raining meteors, but you may get to see one or two or more shooting stars in a night. Shooting stars are not really stars but small objects like rocks that when are captured by the earth’s gravity and accelerates, they generate enough heat to melt them up and being small, they don’t have the opportunity to even reach the earth’s land or sea surface.

Meteor showers that make more than one occurrence of these shooting stars more than once in a night are usually the fragments of a comet left behind from the path a comet takes. And since these comets have a fixed path, so do their fragments have a fixed location and when the earth passes by this path, this is when we see the meteor showers.

Problem is I do not know where to look. I used to have a software on my computer that shows all constellations in the night sky, but I uninstalled it. I usually ask Mike Lopez who has a telescope at home and knows his constellations well but he was offline. I tried searching, and Google was just not that updated with the current sites talking about the meteor shower. And maybe it is about time to buy my own telescope too. And this brings me to thought of all these other stuff I want to buy, like a night vision cameras and binocular cameras. But maybe I’ll do these next time when I have a house with a big back yard to set things up and will probably get into astronomical photography. I think that would be cool.

Mouths and Exerting Physical Effort

I first noticed this from my nephew, Alan Go. My late dad came from a family of 10 brothers and sisters so you can expect me to have cousins that are way older than me. And Alan Go was the son of my older cousins so me and Alan did not really have our ages too far apart. During out BMX years, when fixing bicycles, I noticed Alan when tightening a bolt, or exerting some physical effort, his lips go near to his gums and shows his teeth and the sides of his mouth stretch as if he was going to smile, be he is not smiling. And it is in perfect sync with his physical effort. The more physical effort needed, like when he opens a tight bottle, the more his lips go into that certain position.

I notice this early in other people, and I barely noticed myself, and when I started paying attention to myself, I have another mannerism, where when I exert some physical effort, my lips roll inward and in some occassions, my tongue partially goes out. I also noticed I do not only do this with physical effort, but with mental effort as well like when I am thinking hard on some computer program, or solving whatever PC problem I may have.

When I told this to my wife, she told me about her dad. That his lips keep moving in this certain manner, which I also observed and indeed, it does move when he is exerting some effort.

You think we’re all weird? Well Michael Jordan always takes out his tongue when going for a dunk. Sometimes even just for a lay-up, he takes out his tongue already. We are all weird. 😀

Grow Fast

I remember there was a time when I was riding the MRT which is one of the public transport elevated electrical city trains in the area where I used to go to college. Someone suddenly tapped my shoulder and was asking how I am like he knew me already.

I was still puzzled who I was talking to, until I finally remembered who. He was Alex, who was someone I know from highschool. I was surprised how taller he was and in highschool he was way way smaller, real small. And the big difference was just so great I had no idea who I was talking to at first.

How can someone grow so fast so large? I myself am puzzled, but all I know Alex worked his way to be tall. He was really looking for all remedies that he can do and a friend of ours mention he once accompanied Alex to buy some Chinese growth balls and all these other stuff stretching stuff.

Technology of today is a bit more advanced now. There are known Human Growth Hormones (HGH) such as Sytropin HGH. Sytropin is an advanced blend of HGH, L-group amino acids, and Growth Factors that help you look, feel and perform at your best. This can be purchased without a prescription and has well documented positive results.

So those that want to get a few more inches added to their height that may even simply boost their self esteem, there are many options to do. They do not really just make you grow like magic, they simply enhance the growth process.